Art Review : Pairings Don’t Always Work in ‘Muses’

“Muses” at the Pasadena Armory for the Arts is a frankly feminist, frequently confusing, fitfully fulfilling exhibition. It presents works representing nine instances of collaboration between an artist and a writer. Organized by local critic and art historian Betty Ann Brown, it intends to debunk the silly, if ancient, notion that artistic inspiration always flows from an ethereal female muse to a male artist, who does the work.

Brown counters this cliche by leaving men out of the mix altogether. Here inspiration becomes a matter between women, at least, one gathers, it is supposed to. If one views the show in a normal way, looking at the work and deriving one’s own interpretation, it reads pretty well.

Sant Khalsa, for example, presents “The Sacred Spring.” It consists straightforwardly of a white wall with a stack of conical paper drinking cups on a little shelf. A uniform horizontal row of plastic spigots stretches down the wall, each labeled with some such word as creativity , passion or harmony . One can drink from any of them. The piece seems fueled by a generous impulse and enlivened by a certain irony. There’s a pop culture twist to the ordinary spouts, and a wicked wit informs the fact that no matter which of these grandly labeled fonts you choose, you get plain water in your cup.

Then you remember there are two cooks for each soup here. In order to give the collaborating writer her due, you read her entry in the catalogue. In this case, it’s poet Elizabeth Converse. Her verse is perfectly nice, but she diverges from Khalsa in being all heart and no wit. It begins to seem that what is demonstrated here is not mutual inspiration but two talented people motivated to make different art about the same idea.

Something similar occurs in Susan Silton’s “You May Already Be a Winner.” It includes a gallery with three walls papered with those annoying advertising come-ons that arrive in the mail enticing you to enter some sweepstakes or other. Hanging from the ceiling is a battery of silver spoons that tinkle in the breeze of the air-conditioning. A vintage brass telescope is trained on the spoons. Peek in and you see only the reflection of your own eye. Behind the telescope, there is a box lined with red fabric. It contains a single silver spoon, its handle engraved with the word phantom.

It all seems a virtually autobiographical and quite effective exercise in visual poetry about relying on oneself, not chance, in life’s quest.

Writer Terry Wolverton’s piece is more elegiac and troubled but basically in sync. Curator Brown’s catalogue essay, however, weighs in with the Marxist idea that the source of all this trouble is capitalism. Maybe that proves a man can act as muse.

It may be no coincidence that among the exhibition’s most effective and affecting works is one where the collaborators appear most seamlessly inseparable. Valerie Soe and Amy Moon put together “Binge.” In a videotaped monologue, a girl recounts how her problems with her starchy boyfriend caused her to go on eating binges. Her demeanor makes it clear it’s not the particular eating disorder that’s the problem but the corrosive effects of a bad relationship. Artifacts hanging about are all pretty things, like a pink plastic radio, that express a naive girl’s longing for a nice life. Occasionally these kitsch dreams are punctuated with pistol targets and spent bullet shells revealing murderous thoughts.

Several works deal with the disillusionment caused by unrealistic romantic expectations. Cheryl Dullabaun and Sondra Hale rephrase Freud’s “What do they want?” Their installation has nice touches like halved pomegranates trapped between glass panes. Lisa Adams and Martha Ronk have brought forth a piece called “Why Does It Come and Go?” Its hinged paintings also echo riddled targets.

Lezley Saar muses on the past in Assemblage objects and paintings called “Suspension of Disbelief.” The autobiographical character of the work links it to the writings of her partner Nancy Agabian, but the point is strained. Even more mismatched are the couplings of otherwise interesting pairs like Susan Rankaitis and Amy M. Lam Wai Man or Joan Watanabe and Amy Uyematsu.

By contrast there’s a smart synergy between Enaj Lee and M.A. Greenstein in their piece on entropy and belief systems. Wax bowls in a row contain twine balls representing souls and carry labels about where they want to go. A community of Monopoly-board houses tells of social anomie.

“Muses” is such a mixed bag that at one moment you want to trash it and the next you want to figure out a way to make its worthwhile aspirations work. The solution seems to lie in finding a method of organization that clarifies more than it befuddles.

* Pasadena Armory for the Arts, 145 N. Raymond Ave., through Dec. 30, closed Monday, Tuesday and holidays, (818) 792-5101.